Saccharine Sweet
by scullyseviltwin
Summary: Olive juice? Elephant shoes? Maybe... I love you?


_The cynic pessimist in me didn't want to write this. She was chanting all "Angst! Write angst I say! Or we shall duel!" So, instead of giving myself flowers and candy this year, I'm giving myself this little Valentine's Day piece of goo. The shamed optimist in me is happy. Here be fluff. Thanks Kirsten.

* * *

_Winter in Vegas didn't seem like much of a traditional winter; no snow, no billowy gusts. There really were no Columbia jackets for people to burrow beneath. Some wore scarves from time to time, but most were out-of-towners, not accustomed with the drastic temperature change that January brought. It reached a balmy sixty-seven degrees during the day. At night however, the heat skittered away, ushering in icy air from the Rockies. A chill of forty-three settled over the Strip, moving to sneak its way down Fremont Street.

That cold, those forty-three degrees were pretty damned cold, even to Gil Grissom; if he really felt the chill biting at his bones, no one would notice. The man could be burning in hell and wear that same placid expression.

"Where'd we leave the car?" Sara mumbled, wrapping her fingers around her dinner. Bone weary, he trudged alongside her. Both were so tired; five shifts straight and they were still standing, but only barely. Grissom blinked against the wind and scrunched up his nose.

His sniffled briefly and thought. "Behind the Golden Gate," Grissom said after a moment and took another large bite of his own meal and realized that her nose was unbearably cute when it was pinkened from the cold.

She was always adorable; yes, he adored her. That–that didn't matter. He was comfortable with the fact that yes, he found her attractive, gorgeous, stunning; that was okay in his head. Finding someone attractive – finding her attractive –wasn't a real issue.

He chewed on his hamburger thoughtfully. It was a damn good piece of meat if he had to categorize it; well-done and juicy. The onions weren't too crunchy and the lettuce was fresh. All in all, he was quite satisfied with the status of his last minute dinner purchase. Although it was delicious, appetizing... something wasn't right. Holding back the wrapper encased meal, he studied it for a moment.

Then he glanced at Sara; she was busy munching on a veggie burrito wrap-type thing, a bottle of water peeking out from the edge of her parka. She sniffled, fixed her hat on her head, and went on chewing. Grissom thought for a moment, but couldn't seem to sort out his mind; something simply... just wasn't right. It wasn't a big deal that she was eating with him; that, in fact, happened quite often. And it wasn't that she was a vegetarian and he was chowing down on a big piece of animal; there was no need to be worried about offending her, she could care less what he ate.

It was the fact that he was second-guessing himself, wondering if, though he wasn't offending her with his taste in food, if he was unsettling her. Such a strange feeling; he attempted to shake it off. For some reason, Grissom was wondering about etiquette–in terms of her and it was slightly unsettling.

Taking one last look at the hamburger, he scrunched up his face in something like disgust and tossed it in the nearest receptacle.

Sara paused in mid-chew and glanced at him expectantly, as if for an explanation. With the back of her hand, she wiped her mouth and looked around both sides of her for something that might have caught his attention. There was nothing, so she licked her lips and waited for an explanation. There was no easy one for him to give, so he said the one thing that was on his mind that wasn't intensely convoluted or required an abundance of thought. "I love you."

Sara stopped moving altogether and just looked at him. Her eyes hadn't gone wide and her mouth hadn't gone slack; she's just gone incredibly, incredibly still.

He fought for something to say, wracked his brain. Luckily, he didn't have to say much; as soon as he opened his mouth to babble and excuse or to perhaps mutter incoherently, the laser show started up and Joan Jett's "I Love Rock and Roll" blared over the outdoor speakers.

Sara glanced up for a moment; images of raining poker chips and floating cards whizzed by over her head but she couldn't make much sense of them anyway. When she looked back down, he was looking at her and all she could think to do was chew... chew and walk. They walked along slowly, Sara finishing off her wrap and Grissom quietly contemplating if he'd ever actually opened his mouth at all.

Then suddenly she stopped and crumpled the tin foil up into a ball, dropping it into the garbage can they were next to.

Her eyes clouded over a bit; she was wondering if she'd misheard him. She did that sometimes. Like once, she, Greg, Nick and Warrick were all perusing over a take-out menu, ordering for dinner. Nick, having found something rather odd on the menu had commented, "Who would want a spinach roll?"

Sara had lifted her head and asked, "Who would want to spin a troll?"

So maybe she'd heard him incorrectly. Perhaps he's said, "I love juice," "Olive shoes," or "Aisle of yew" …. That last one didn't even make sense. She must be going insane; she shook it off. Licking her lips, she struggled with words, with a coherent thought. Any thought would do really, but her brain seemed to have frozen as had her face and her feet.

"Elephant shoes!" she thought suddenly, but that made even less sense than 'aisle of yew' had. She had to say _something_; if he had said what she thought he'd said, it warranted some sort of reaction from her. She _had_ wanted to hear those words from him for a long time... but perhaps not so suddenly. Then again, when had he ever played by any rules she had, whether imaginary or not? Her lips twitched a bit and she could tell that he noticed; something flashed across his eyes. "Excuse me?" she finally asked.

Her lips began to chap from the wind; he wanted to kiss them.

"I said," Grissom said confidently, squaring his shoulders, puffing out his chest just a bit as this was _big_. "I said that I love you." His voice was just above the level of the music; Sara squinted and watched his lips as he spoke. Nope, still looked like "olive juice".

"Wait," she shook her head, as if clearing the cobwebs. He'd said something, something that had impacted her... for some reason. "What!"

"I love you!" He shouted, causing a few people to turn and shoot him lopsided grins; he grinned back, at no one in particular. "I do!"

"Grissom what are you even –" Yeah, she was hallucinating, had to be.

"Sara, I love you, I'm in love with you," he threw his hands up in the air, letting them fall back down at his sides. Yeah, he was freaking out over olive juice, how typical... or something. "I _love_ you."

Again, she shook her head, the bottle of water becoming dislodged from her jacket, falling to bounce off of the ground. "Okay, Grissom, speak very slowly because I'm very tired... not quite sure I'm getting you..." she spoke slowly and enunciated every word to make sure that _he_ knew what _she_ was saying.

Grissom blinked, secured his hands around her upper arms and pulled her into him to kiss her hard, quick on the lips. Pulling back, eyes wild, he said again. "I love you, Sara."

"Stop it!" she admonished, at a loss for any other words, shocked... but grinning. She shook her head vehemently and took a step away from him.

Grissom shook his head, a tiny little smirk taunting his lips. "No."

"Yes!" she demanded, stamping her feet and licking her lips. The cap on her head slipped over to one side and skewed her hair and his heart clenched; adorable, there she went being all cute again. Damn her.

"I love you."

"Stop!" she shrieked, her own lips turning up higher in a delirious smile. Of course she didn't want him to, but it sounded good anyway. No, really though, he needed to stop. Like now, prontinto... or keep going, yeah that was good, maybe if he kept saying it. Some flowers, perhaps a passionate kiss scene up against the wall of the Golden Nugget wouldn't be monumentally out of line.

"I... love you," he said quickly again, taking a step back from her, then thought back on it and took a _big_ step forward. Nearly, he could just nearly feel the heat radiating off of her body. The lights above them slipped from green into blue and the song shuffled into some hard rock. It was the complete opposite of the clichéd gooeyness that was happening beneath it.

"Stop itttttt," she whined, grinning like a buffoon, wondering where the hell any of this outburst had come from... and then not really caring.

Again, Grissom shook his head and turned halfway around, getting the attention of the first person he saw. "Excuse me, sir," he said to the man who was strolling hand-in-hand with a woman. The twinkle in his eyes drew in the couple; no, he wasn't crazy, he was head over heels was all.

"Uh, yeah?"

"This girl here," Grissom thrust his thumb over his shoulder in Sara's direction. He nodded a few times and then dipped his head in her direction. "This amazing woman, I love her."

The other man grinned stupidly and high-fived Grissom who spun back to Sara. The other couple skittered off, leaving the two criminalists to stare at one another. The cold wind whipped across their faces, just like the colors projecting above them.

When the onlookers had lost interest in the two going insane off to the side, they fell into silence. Sara bit her lip and tried to reign in her crazy smile. It didn't work. He tried to suck his back in and it kind of worked. Only kind of; the grin was gone from his face, but the twinkle still hovered in his eyes. "What was that?" she asked after a moment, admiring the way his cheeks pinkened from the whipping air.

Looking to the canopy above them, Grissom pondered, "I... don't know."

Sara smiled and grabbed his arm, startling him. "Sounds like you." Grissom was confused, but Sara didn't much care; he's started it, he'd been the one to confuse himself and other than seeming as if he'd just had a momentary lapse into an alternate personality, Sara found it rather sweet. Maybe a little scary.

Sara tugged him a bit and their feet started working. The heavy AC/DC slid into something softer about sliding and their walking fell in time with the music. They were nearly to First Street and that meant getting back into the car, and that meant slipping back into their roles. And since he was high on endorphins after his spaz, Grissom wasn't quite sure he was ready for that.

He _wasn't_ ready for that.

That was pretty much why he turned and with a quick, cautionary look, pushed her gently up against the wall, tilted his head and brought his lips down to hers. She was smiling and brought her hand up to touch at his cheek as he kissed her. It was like it was meant to be... or perhaps she'd just imagined every single second of it down to the very last detail so many times that she knew what she wanted...or didn't.

Oh but that didn't matter, didn't matter because his tongue was in her mouth and her tongue was being happily responsive so it all really... didn't matter. There was a pleasant moaning from the back of his throat so Sara reached around and scratched at the nape of his neck and that was good too... really good.

Against his lips, she laughed; his hands were shaking and he just wouldn't break the kiss. Soon both of her hands were framing his face and gently prying him off of her. "Hell of a first kiss," she panted, bringing his forehead to hers.

"Kissed you a thousand times in my head."

"Like this?" she breathed, staring into him–into _him_.

Dropping his head to her shoulder and kissing her neck, he huffed, half-chuckle, half sigh, "Never like this." Lifting her face to the overhang, the overhang she wished was the endless sky, she bit her lip and smiled insanely.

"Want to go back to the car?" she lifted her lips and asked.

Grissom lifted his head so that he could look at her; a little boy, that's what he resembled. "Let's stay here."

And they made out against the wall of the Golden Nugget because really, who was looking?


End file.
